Stumped: Root balls prove a stubborn foe in Jacksonville’s cleanup

May 16--JACKSONVILLE -- Tornado victims in Jacksonville have until May 31 to push their debris to the side of the road, but stump grinder Jimmy Booth isn't sweating the deadline.

Root balls -- those tilted tree stumps found in every other yard here -- aren't going away any time soon he said.

"There's two years of work in this town," said Booth, a Ragland resident and owner of Booth Tree and Stump.

Two months after an EF-3 tornado hit Jacksonville, the army of disaster workers in the city's northern neighborhoods has dwindled to a few isolated platoons in hardhats. Local residents need to get their last bits of refuse to the curb by May 31 if they want to be sure it's hauled away.

There's just one problem: the root ball. That's the vegetative mass that remains after you knock a tree over, expose the tangle of roots beneath, then cut away the trunk and haul it off. The chore is one insurance companies will often pay for, or volunteers might do for free.

Good luck, however, in getting help with the unsightly clump of wood and dirt that looks like a headless octopus climbing out of a grave.

"Most people pay me out of pocket," said Terry Boozer, a Pleasant Valley-based stump grinder who was one of the first people Jacksonville residents called after the storm. "They say 'the tree people got all my insurance money.'"

Boozer said insurance often picks up the tab for trees that hit houses or fences. For trees that aren't covered, he said, people usually spend their savings getting the trunks hauled away -- and put off stump removal for a better day.

Government aid isn't likely, either. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay for uninsured damage to houses, to get them up to safe living conditions, FEMA officials have said.

An ugly yard, on the other hand, is your problem.

"As for the stuff that's in your yard, that's between you and your insurance company," said Bob Porreca, a spokesman for FEMA.

Mayor Johnny Smith said residents with root balls should go ahead and register at the disaster recovery operation FEMA is running at the city's community center. People have to be rejected for other aid before they can qualify for Small Business Administration loans, he noted, and it's possible some volunteer agencies are willing to help with stump removal.

"I can't guarantee anything but there's a possibility someone could help," he said.

Pushing the stump to the roadside is an option, if you have a backhoe or bulldozer. For people without heavy machinery, it's hard to say what of combination of cutting and digging, if any, will work.

"I don't think it's something people should do themselves unless they have some experience," said Dani Carroll, a Calhoun County agent for the state's Cooperative Extension Service, a clearinghouse of information on most lawn-related topics.

Booth has been battling stumps for 25 years, using a yellow grinding machine he tows behind his pickup. To hear him tell it, the root ball is a formidable foe best handled by a professional.

"You'd be surprised how much metal there is in a stump," said Booth, who wore a hardhat with a metal mesh faceguard while working in the yard of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church Tuesday afternoon. "People have some junk, and they just naturally throw it out by the tree."

Booth has seen pieces of pipe whizz by the heads of passers-by, flung out by his stump-grinding equipment. He's seen stumps, ground down a few inches, that rose again, pushed up by the pressure of the soil. He's heard of people who've burned out the clutch on a pickup trying to pull up a stump with a strong chain.

Burning isn't an option. According to the mayor, it's against state law to burn within 500 feet of a structure, which rules out nearly every property in the storm zone.

Booth, the stump grinder, advises against use of explosives. And yes, he said, he has seen people launch stumps onto cars, pumphouses and other structures.

"When you blast, the stump has to go somewhere," he said.

Booth claims he can tell when a stump is ready to come up.

"Sometimes I'll drive by a stump and I'll say, 'That's not ripe yet,'" he said. As Booth describes it, ripeness is a function of the owner's readiness to do away with the stump. The better the rest of the property looks, the more eager the owner is to get rid of the stump.

Local officials don't expect all of the city's stumps to ripen in the next two weeks. It's obvious that not all the stumps will be up by May 31, county engineer Brian Rosenbalm said. He said he hopes people will move what they can to the curb.